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PAUL FIORI: The Gift of Gab

 

Paul Fiori was a talker. "He would talk your ear off, and he would talk to anybody," said his wife, Lynda Fiori. He talked so much to the guys working at the Mobil station where he got gas that he befriended them. After it was reported he was missing, his friends there, six of whom attended his memorial service, wrote Lynda a letter, "telling me he would help them make coffee, give people directions and always talk about his two daughters."

Oratory skills were vital to the couple's courtship. After seeing Lynda speaking about football defenses in a speech class when she was a college sophomore, Mr. Fiori knew she was the one. Then he talked her into marrying him.

"He treated me like a princess," she said. "Never a day went by that he didn't tell me he loved me. He brought me flowers on no occasion and wrote me poems. He took me to Windows on the World just to express his love for me."

One year ago, Mr. Fiori, then 30, left his high school teaching position in Hawthorne, N.Y., for the equities desk of Cantor Fitzgerald so his young family could be more financially secure. On Sept. 11, their second child, Adriana, was only 3 months old. Their oldest, Debbi, 2, now kisses Daddy's picture every day.

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times